Suddenly, North and South America have become more lucrative markets for these natty buckets, grapples, and scoops, which speed bulk loading and unloading in ports across the world. The competition is tough among the grab makers and with other alternative bulk handling methods in what is described as a static market.
There’s been a noticeable slowdown in ship building, which is causing some angst for some leading manufacturers of grabs in the world, including Orts GmbH, of Germany. Surprisingly, given world market conditions, 2011 was the best year in Orts history and 2012 was quite good as well. Unfortunately, 2013 has not been so good, says Orts Vice President & Deputy Managing Director, Sigvard Orts Jr.
Despite the global economic meltdown, Orts had no order cancellations between 2008 and 2010. But, this year the German company – which relies on shipping lines for most of its business – is caught up in the worldwide shipping crisis that has stalled shipbuilding, including the self unloader vessel market that are deck crane equipped and often topped off with Orts grabs.
“There are some summer and autumn orders for new builds but not as good as in recent years,” says Orts Jr. With 40 years as a grab maker, including pioneering inventions, Orts still sees itself as small and family owned, making it different among the leading makers of grabs. Orts Jr. says this as an advantage, allowing the company to be more flexible, “so I don’t see the latest slowdown as being a big problem for us,” he adds.
Europe “so, so”
Elsewhere, in Holland, Eric Visser, Managing Director of Verstegen Grijpers BV – another in the Top Five grouping – describes business in Europe as “so, so” and outside Europe “good.” Verstegen is selling its big clamshell grabs for mobile harbour cranes, port cranes, and mobile unloaders at a good clip. Over the past decade Visser has watched ships get bigger and bigger and as bulk materials are moved in larger quantities, the grabs have also increased in size as shippers seek to trim the transport costs per tonne.
Mirroring the experience of many of their colleagues, 2011 and 2012 were good years for Verstegen. “From a Dutch or European perspective, if you’re depending on the European market you will be in a bad situation,” says Visser. “But, we do business all over the world and don’t rely on any one part of the world or any industry in particular.” In Spain, grab maker Blug Credeblug SL, relies on exports for 80% of its business. Blug Commercial Manager, Jose Zubeldia, says the current worlds market trend “isn’t very good”, but the United States has become its best area, followed by growing sales in South American countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, plus an emerging market in Mexico where investment in ports is increasing.
No bounce back
Zubeldia says the current global market is “not in the best shape” and there hasn’t been the bounce back hoped for a year ago. Blug sells 50% of its grabs to ports around the world and 50% to industry users. The domestic Spanish market is not in good shape, making global sales even more important, and Blug has asserted itself well in port applications for its grabs.
“We want to survive and hope the market will turn around within a couple of years,” adds Zubeldia. “Everyone wants a change in the current trend, but there are no new lights coming on and we’ll have to wait.” Meanwhile, Blug is “trying to minimise its costs while improving our grabs.”
World-leading grab maker SMAG (Salzgitter Maschinenbau AG, of Germany) has relied on its popular Peiner range of grabs to weather the difficult market conditions of recent years. The company attributes its continued success partly on making “above average investments in research and development” to bring forward new designs and new products into production. SMAG’s new orange peel grab, for example, weighs 30 tonnes and has a capacity of 56 cubic meters. Other grab makers are also bringing new and bigger grabs to the market.
Higher profile
In Italy, up and coming grab maker, CFS Handling, seems to be flourishing from a move to bigger premises in Montichiari in the Brescia Province two years ago and reports “big success” in the international market, according to CEO Italo Civettini. Part of this could be attributed to the company seeking a higher global profile as it has become more and more active in major industry trade shows around the world that often lead to breakthrough sales, with an eye especially on India, Korea, and China.
CFS Handling is active in the port sector with its own designed and built grabs and has also had success in the cement industry and steel mills, plus success in handling scrap, demolition materials, waste, shred material, turning chips, urban solid waste, paper, cast iron ingots, ores, slag, bales, coal, grain, zirconium and garnet.
So far, it hasn’t had to make an on-site intervention with its service team for any grab it has installed. “Nowadays,” says Civettini, “the seriousness of deliveries and guarantee of functionality on an aggressively competitive and difficult worldwide market are components of primary importance to us. CFS Handling has conquered this market with high quality, good prices, excellent shipment terms, materials and components, plus our wonderful design and customer focus.”
Award winner
In the United States, Anvil Attachments, of Slaughter, Louisiana, has taken advantage of winning a 2012 industry best grab award and ventured more strongly into Europe with
the aim of expanding its dealer network. It won the IBJ award for its 4RD coke clamshell grab, boasting a customer driven design, “highly superior bucket” that provides longer life between rebuilds, significantly lower maintenance costs, and greatly increased “up” time. The award aside, Anvil had one of its best years ever in 2012, according to marketing/communication specialist, Shane Toncrey. “We have been working hard on redesigning some of our grabs to make them more cost efficient, while increasing quality and the results have started to show.” While 2013 has been a little slower than 2012 so far, Toncrey says Anvil has “a lot of business in the pipeline and the year could possibly end up being better than 2012.”
Anvil has worked hard in recent years to expand its market penetration and now offers a complete line of grabs, from hydraulic buckets and grapples to cable buckets and grapples to electro hydraulic and diesel hydraulic buckets and grapples.
Toncrey says that Anvil feels it is the industry leader in the coke bucket market segment with its four rope clamshell grab. “We recently redesigned our single line, radio-controlled grab to reduce cost and increase quality and these units have been a hot seller,” he adds. And Anvil is “extremely proud” of two custom-built, eight tine, scrap grapples it recently built for a stevedoring company. The 15 cubic yard grapples were built “hand-in-hand” with the customer “to meet their needs and wants exactly.” Anvil has also noted high interest in its new diesel product line of grabs and says the market response has been “tremendous.” The diesel hydraulic product line is totally self-contained and while most units are being used for ship gear, they do have other applications.
Hot spots
Another US grab maker, dredging specialist, Cable Arm Inc, of Trenton, Michigan, had a better 2012 than it fared in 2011 and is finding work in environmental projects around the continent. Sales hot spots include the USA, Canada and Japan, and company President and owner, Ray Bergeron figures the domestic US market would pick up even more if Washington DC had a better plan in place to get jobs going.
Innovations
There’s little room in today’s highly competitive market for grab companies that rest on their laurels. Innovation and continuous step-by-step improvements to the product line are the key to success, grab makers report. Environmental stewardship is also of increasing concern and focus. SMAG says it has a range of much larger grabs at the project stage to augment its Peiner brand. And the company strives to keep the environmental impact from use of its grabs “as small as possible.” Innovative features to minimise the loss of bulk materials during handling include dust covers, special sealing systems on the side and bottom lips, the use of steel sealing strips, rubber-sealed lips, overlapping bottom and side lips or special side toothing all prevent bulk materials from trickling down. “In contrast to our competitors,” a recent SMAG report says, “our four-rope, dual scoop grabs are also designed with just one, rather than two scoop pivot points. This results in movement of scoops that ensures a synchronous closing and excludes any offset between scoops.” Verstegen’s Visser says the Dutch company hasn’t made any really big innovations but is making small modifications to improve its grabs “all the time.”
At Cable Arm in the US, innovations have included two ideas that have boosted use in both navigational and environmental sediment dredging – an open centre water flow design and a large over square footprint design to reduce water content in shallow face dredging. The company has also introduced a new bearing design which will reduce the need for greasing.
Step by step
Orts reports from Germany that it has made “step by step” improvements in recent years that have made grab maintenance much easier for ship crews. The German company boasts a line of grabs that has unique design compared to many of its competitors and claims to have the lowest deadweight grabs, which boosts capacity for handling such materials as iron ore, coal, grain and wood chips.
Sigvard Orts Jr. says the company has had continued success with its radio-controlled diesel-hydraulic grabs including a recent customer that specializes in cargo recovery from damaged ships. “These grabs can work on every kind of crane without any additional equipment (e.g. cable for power supply) and they are fast, powerful and reliable.” Some customers like the grabs so much they’ll fly them around the world in an urgent case.
Software
Anvil has been using Finite Element Analysis software for several years to help it to design “the lightest, strongest grabs possible, without guessing.” Toncrey says Anvil currently has a patent on its cluster sheave design and is seeking patents on two other designs for use with its grabs and grapples.
The cluster sheaves innovation has brought a new type of coal handling grab to the market, which can increase cable life by two or three times for its customers over the standard roller guide configuration used by rival grab makers. One delivery to a US Mid-west energy buyer also had reversible bolt on edges or lips which increase bucket life by taking most of the wear when the grab closes on material and the ground surface. On a traditional coal grab, the bottom and side lips would have to be replaced after wearing. With the innovative bolt on edges Anvil offers, the edges are simply replaced and this can be done many times without having to replace the lips. The coal grab also sports a new rubber bumper idea to reduce impact when it bangs against the top of the crane.
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